De Togis
by Zallah
Summary: A collection of humorous ficlets, mostly Cassius centric, based upon the author's own experiences of making and wearing a toga.
1. Rainy Days

Disclaimer: Made with concepts derived from Shakespeare! And a bit of history. What neither of them wish to claim is, I suppose, mine. Set (very roughly) two to six months before the beginning of the play.

* * *

Cassius had, at best, mixed feelings regarding the Senate sitting on rainy days. It was not that he himself disliked the rain; indeed he immensely enjoyed most weather that kept all other men shut firmly within doors.

On those days when the rain began falling early in the morning or even before dawn, the Senate meeting might be called off for the day, or else the Senators made their way to the _curia_ under canopies born by slaves. It was the days when rain began mid-morning, when most of the Senators were halfway between home and the Senate-house, that were by far the worst. When at last they arrived, it was to cram the _curia_ full of half-drenched men who, in their half-drenched togas beginning to steam from the heat of several dozens of bodies packed together, smelled like so many sodden sheep milling about in a pen. In his particularly uncharitable moods, which such days always brought out, Cassius thought the analogy apt not only with respect to the nose but to temperament as well.

When Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, the Senators had gone milling after Pompey, following him to Greece in their hearts, at least (Cassius would not credit them with minds), if not with strength of arms. Cassius had gone that way too, of course, but it _had_ been with strength of arms and _not_ in woolen fuzziness. But now again in the wake of Pompey's death, they milled about at Caesar's heels, voting ever absurdly greater honors upon him.

That was one thing about sheep: they didn't vote, so far as Cassius had observed, though it _was_ just the sort of thing they would do to make a wolf their leader. Cassius was not a sheep. He did vote, and he voted against the powers and the honors.


	2. Lean and Hungry

Note: Set sometime after . Also: togas are good for improving one's posture.

* * *

Reflecting back on it, Caesar thought his choice of words to have been an improbable one. How, really, could one possibly look 'lean and hungry' in the immense quantities of fabric that comprised a toga? Wrapped around and around in a double layer of draping wool nearly five times his own girth - particularly including the extra artful folds of the _sinus_ over the stomach - any man looked fat and fat men appeared enormous. Perhaps, then, the eye made accommodation for the numerous folds, mentally subtracting them to gauge a man's weight? It might serve to some extent, but not to identify true gauntness.

Calling again to his mind the image of Cassius as he had seen him the afternoon of the Lupercal, leaning against a brightly coloured column, Caesar remembered something of Cassius' posture. He had held himself in a very uncomfortable manner, almost stiffly, which had been a very odd pose for a man apparently taking his ease with the aid of a convenient piece of architecture. Something in the set of his shoulders, the position of his arms, had suggested a man engaged in a great balancing act . . . which was not so very dissimilar to Cassius as he often appeared in the Senate. Jove knew a toga wasn't the easiest garment to wear and was nothing like a tunic for freedom of movement, but the weight and pile of the wool itself held it in place well enough and surely a grown man had no fear that the entire thing would slip off of him with the first careless motion?

No? Why yes, of course, that was surely it. Cassius, so spectacularly ill-at-ease in a toga that he had nothing at all of grace in action was, even to the eye, an entirely separate entity from his primary article of clothing. 'Hungry' might have had something to do with his face - a glint in the eye, perhaps - but 'lean' was for the almost absurdly distinct man swaddled within the immense bundle of fabric. 


	3. The Citizen's Battle

Note: Set about nine years prior to the assassination; Marcus Crassus, together with Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, was a member of the First Triumvirate. And yes, togas can really be this difficult to put on.

* * *

The campaign has been a mess, as Cassius had said it would be. Crassus had insisted on going, though, and insisted on going his way (or, rather, the way of that damned double-crosser, Ariamnes), and that had been a disaster of prodigious proportions: near the city of Carrhae, Crassus' army was defeated, most of their eagle standards lost, Crassus himself killed, and the whole fiasco mitigated only slightly by the fact that Cassius and the soldiers that had marched away with him shortly before the final battle - a bare quarter of their original force - were still alive.

Mitigated rather significantly, actually, in Cassius' mind, although he was thinking on a larger scale, now that the governance of Syria lay directly upon him. It was a great opportunity, really, for gaining quite a number of things: military prestige, to be achieved by some form of revenge upon Parthians; ties of friendship and obligation among the Syrians, useful, surely, in some future chance; civic esteem back in Rome, for de-facto governorship was a nice step up for a quaestor; and personal enrichment, which required careful toeing of the fine line between customary depredations - frowned upon, perhaps, but winked at - and excessive liberties such as warranted a trip through the extortion courts.

There was a downside to statesmanship, however, and after months in the field, Cassius found the greatest drawback to be the donning and wearing of a toga. It was absurd - really, it was - that he should have such difficulty with a garment he had worn, occasionally, at least, for some thirty years now. And yet, here he was, with two slaves helping to dress him, and precious little dressing to show for all their efforts. The slaves could not get the drapes of fabric even once around Cassius' body before he felt some corner of the garment threatening to slip back off, and instinctively Cassius would make a wild dive for it, flailing desperately after the renegade fabric, inevitably spinning himself back out of the toga in the process, and coming up with only a futile handful of wool for all his pains, and nothing left covering himself save his tunic - which at least had the decency to stay just where it was put.

They had been through the whole routine half a dozen times, and Cassius, with the last pretense of dignity spun away two or three turns ago and irritation long since having passed into despair, was ready to collapse upon the floor and give it all up as a lost cause, the toga his own private Carrhae. Just then, however, another slave entered to report that the petitioners who had already begun to congregate outside were now being shown into the atrium. Cassius considered carefully what he stood to loose (his toga) and what to gain (local ties, civic esteem and the rest of it), and resolved to see his duties through - public and sartorial.

It was another two attempts before Cassius at last stood fully and properly wrapped in the pernicious attire. The placement of the drapes still felt very unstable, but for today, at least, perhaps Cassius could seat himself in his tablinum and do all his business from there, not once moving from his chair until the evening, when the last petitioner would finally be seen out. And maybe Cassius would try to get an augur to declare the next day or six as unfavourable for conducting business so he could address himself to the grim necessity of becoming reacquainted with the toga


	4. Unlikely Companions

Note: Set (roughly) in the six or eight months preceding the play.

* * *

Caesar had an eye for details, which, however else it might be of use to him, he often employed in the care and maintenance of his person and clothing. By extension, he often made similar observations of other men as well.

There was, for example, one afternoon not long after Caesar had returned to Rome from Spain that he caught sight of a pair of startlingly dissimilar togas conversing with one another on the other side of the Forum. To be sure, both were the plain, undyed wool of the toga virilis, worn over tunics also undyed though adorned with the broad, vertical red stripes permitted to Senators, but that was the end of the similarity between them. Even from this distance, Caesar could see that the fabric of one was very finely woven, at least for wool, while the other, to judge by its draping, was clearly much heavier and surely much coarser. As Caesar drew nearer, Finely Woven resolved into a light-weight twill (tunic and toga both cut from the same cloth) worn by Marcus Brutus - a simple elegance, well to be expected of Servilia's son - while Coarsely Woven was revealed to be . . . oh, now that was just _hideous_. Two _clearly_ different materials: twill toga over a herring-bone tunic, which gross offence was perpetrated by Caius Cassius.

Some months later, when Caesar was thinking of finally settling the impromptu, yet surprisingly fierce competition that he had instigated between Brutus and Cassius for the first praetorship, the one issue that never left Caesar's mind in the lists of their qualifications was not concerned with military achievements, aptitude for law and legal quandaries, or public duties fulfilled or neglected, but rather a recollection of two togas, idly conversing whilst waiting to enter the Senate house. Caesar really could not allow the first and most honourable praetorship to go to a man who could not even co-ordinate his clothing; that position would surely have to fall to Brutus.


End file.
